This week (05/09/2017 – 10/09/2017) is the 2017 Pixelatl Animation Festival in Cuernavaca, Mexico and at the festival, Cartoon Network Latin America has announced that they’ve greenlit a new animated series of shorts based on Ivanobich Verduzco’s creation – Viking Tales (Latin American Spanish title – Vikingos). The new series will be produced by Mighty Animation in Mexico and it also won the grand prize for Pixelatl’s Ideatoon competition in 2016. Ivanobich along with Luis Patricio Salmón, the producer of visual content at Mighty Animation, were also present at the Cartoon Network: New IP’s panel yesterday afternoon at the Pixelatl festival.

Viking Tales tells the story of Reidar and his fellow Vikings, together they traverse through the great Land of Midgard finding treasure, fighting giant monsters and above all having a lot of fun. The new series can be defined as an action comedy. At present, it’s not known when Viking Tales will air on Cartoon Network Latin America or on its YouTube channel in a similar manner to its other recent short-form animated success – Villainous.

Cartoon Network At Pixelatl Animation Festival 2017 Schedule

Cartoon Network will be attending the 2017 Pixelatl animation, video games and comics festival in Cuernavaca, Mexico, this year’s festival will be held between Tuesday 5th September and Sunday 10th September. At the festival, the winner of Cartoon Network’s “Pitch Me Evolution” competition will be announced. The competition is an opportunity for aspiring animators to pitch their animated show ideas to Cartoon Network, a maximum of fifteen finalists will pitch their show ideas to a panel of Cartoon Network Latin America executives at the festival before a winner is selected. The winner will get to produce an animated pilot which will feature on Cartoon Network’s YouTube channels.

On the first day of the convention (Tuesday 5th September) at 1pm, former Senior Vice President of Original Animation for Cartoon Network – Linda Simensky (now at PBS Kids) will talk about the past, present and future of animation in her “Then, Now, and What’s Next” lecture, she will use her past experiences as examples, including her time working on the original series of Cartoon Network’s The Powerpuff Girls.

On Wednesday 6th September at 4pm, David Feiss – the creator of Cartoon Network’s Cow and Chicken, will talk about some animation industry secrets in his “The Secrets Of The Industry” lecture. David will also share his vision of the future evolution of animation IP and will offer advice on how to keep up to date in the industry.

On Thursday 7th September at 10am, the creator of Cartoon Network Mexico’s Villainous – Alan Ituriel will be hosting a “Creating Artificial Life” workshop session, this session will be about developing characters and their personalities.

On Friday 8th September at 1.30pm, Cartoon Network Mexico will be presenting their new animated projects in the “Cartoon Network: New IPs” panel, joining along in the session are Jaime Jiménez (Director of Content for Cartoon Network Mexico), Humberto Cervera (Content Producer for Cartoon Network Mexico), 2016 Pitch Me Anything finalist – Guillermo Rivas, who submitted his La isla de Jim (Jim’s Island) project to the competition and the winner of 2016 Pitch Me Anything – Gabriel Frugone, his winning submission was “Perrita del Espacio” (Little Dog From Space). The winner of the 2016 Ideatoon Contest at Pixelatl – Ivanobich Verduzco will also be at the panel, (his winning project was “Viking Tales”) along with Luispa Salmón – producer of visual content at Mighty Animation.

Later on Friday at 6.30pm, there will be a special We Bare Bears lecture with the show’s creator – Daniel Chong and with the show’s supervising director – Manny Hernández. During the lecture, both Daniel and Manny will talk about how the show was developed from a web comic (Three Bare Bears) into a fully-fledged BAFTA award-winning animated series produced by Cartoon Network.

Finally on Saturday 9th September at 10am, the creator of Villainous – Alan Ituriel will be doing a lecture about his short-form animation project with Cartoon Network Mexico. Alan will talk about the origins of the show’s concept, why it became an online phenomenon among animation fans in Latin America and he will also talk about his future plans for the show. Festival attendees will get an exclusive Villainous poster and there will also be an opportunity to meet Alan and some of the production crew during the autograph signing session.